Whether you are building an outbound sales cadence for a new team or refining the processes for an existing outbound team, there are a few different types of sales activities to consider. It is also important to remember that the optimal outbound cadence will be unique for your team. As you implement your outbound sales cadence, you should test often and adjust accordingly based on the results.

Analyze Your Buyers

The first step in creating an outbound sales cadence is to take into consideration who your typical prospect and customer is. There are a few different factors that will affect your cadence, and some questions to consider are:

What time zone does your prospects sit and are they geographically different?

What size of company do you typically target – SMB, mid-market or Enterprise?

How many attempts do you have to make on each outbound channel to get a response from a prospect?

These are important factors to uncover when developing your outbound sales cadence because every industry, company and prospect is different. Prospects in some industries might be less likely to have a social media presence or less likely to answer the phone, however are very responsive to email. While others may be less likely to answer an email message but are more likely to pick up the phone. Understanding how your prospects like to be reached and on average how much activity of each channel it takes to reach your prospect is your first step in building an outbound cadence.

Build Your Outbound Sales Cadence

After understanding what channels your prospects prefer, the second step is now to develop a sales activity contact plan. Based on the factors above, your contact plan may include:

social media messages

phone calls

voicemails

emails

The contact plan should be broken down to daily activity and can have a combination of different sales activities in one day. You should also specify the exact number of times to use each of the methods listed above. For example, send them an email and leave a voicemail on the same day. No matter how you organize your contact plan, it is important to diversify your outreach channels and not rely on one type of channel in your contact plan.

The following is an example of what a good starting point might look like for your outbound sales cadence. It’s important to note that the frequency of calls and messages, and whether or not you use tools like local presence while calling, will depend on the industry and persona you sell to.

Outbound Sales Cadence Example

Week 1:

Day 1: Give a call and if they don’t pick up send an email

Day 3: Call and if they don’t pick up leave a voicemail

Week 2:

Day 1: Send LI message and request

Day 4: Call and leave VM

Week 3:

Day 2: Call and send messages in SM like twitter if they are present there

Day 4: Call

Week 4:

Day 1: Leave Voicemail

Day 3: Send another follow up email with content

Day 5: Call

After executing a cadence similar to this, if you are unsuccessful in scheduling a meeting with a prospect, the next step is pass the contact back to marketing and allow them to be nurtured via email. When the time is right, a marketing email may resonate with the prospect, at which point it makes sense to pursue them with an outbound sales approach once again.

Conclusion

When developing your outbound sales cadence for yourself or team, start with learning about your prospect and prospect’s industry, then develop a sales activity cadence. Figure out what works for you, test it, test it again, and then implement.

Want to train your team on how and when to contact prospects? Check out our comprehensive guide to sales prospecting, based on an analysis of 100,000 sales calls.